Horsham Society shares views on pop-up cycleway

There must be at least one edition of this drab but useful manual lying in every house in the land, usually as thumbed and dogeared before the dreaded test as it is ignored afterwards. At the time of the first test, road deaths numbered 7,000 a year with only 2.7million drivers on the roads. Today the number of drivers has risen ten-fold to 27 million and deaths have fallen to about 1,800 p.a. That’s about a forty times improvement in terms of road deaths per number of drivers.

The Highway Code is now in its seventeenth edition and further revisions are currently under review. Circumstances have changed greatly and so too have social attitudes. The emphasis used to be on vehicles, mainly private cars, and how other members of the public would interact with them. Today there’s too many for comfort.

The changes to the Highway Code now being pondered reverse the trend of past decades and begin with a very different perspective. The question asked is who are the most vulnerable road users and what can be done to protect them better? That means the starting point is pedestrians, then cyclists and other non-motorised users of the highway. Consultations are continuing and revisions to the Code will eventually be made; whether for better or worse according to motorists is yet to be seen.

Closer to home, here in Horsham, we too are affected by these alterations in national outlook. The very shape of our inner roads reveals the past solutions to traffic problems. Albion Way is a brief section of dual carriageway slap in the middle of town, cutting through some earlier roads and isolating the centre from the park and beyond. At the time it was built there were no other dual carriageway roads for miles, yet the thinking was that eventually all roads would be built to this standard. That hasn’t materialised but traffic flows have relentlessly increased to where we could seriously wonder whether Albion Way was all a rather avoidable error, based on unreachable forecasts.

Right now, it’s the site of a rather hurried experiment, devoting more space to those vulnerable road users who are central to the revised thinking on priorities. The experimental cycle lane, which appears to have been constructed in haste with unexpected funds from central government, has caused numerous letters of complaint to the pages of this paper and from the evidence on the ground there seems to be much disruption for marginal gain.

That could well be unfortunate if it were to discredit the idea of making special pathways for users such as pedestrians, cyclists and mobility scooters. There are many routes across and through town which could well benefit from restricted use, if upgraded appropriately, and it would indeed be a pity if their implementation were hampered by this single awkward installation. The wheel has come full circle and it’s time to plan again.

The Horsham Society is concerned about the past, present and future of the town. It seeks to promote good planning and design for the built environment and open spaces. Membership of the Horsham Society is open to anyone who shares these concerns. For more information, visit the website www.horshamsociety.org or phone 01403 259038.